


poultice

by blackeyedblonde



Category: True Detective
Genre: AKA my one True calling, Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Old Men Crying, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 01:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7824649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rust dies first.</p><p>Marty knew that’s how it was going to go, all things considered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	poultice

  
Rust dies first.  
  
Marty knew that’s how it was going to go, all things considered. There was too much blood under his hands; not the vibrant red that drips from nosebleeds and splits between knuckles, but churning up black and glistening like they’d struck fortune oil in the well of Rust’s abdomen. It doesn’t stop coming and eventually, if he wanted to, Marty could mix the top layer of dirt on the throne room’s floor—right there by Rust’s hip, his white cotton shirt long since drenched the color of spilled wine—into a cold, soggy poultice.

The meaning of that word unfurls itself across the table of his mind. Maybe because he’d had nothing but dull panic and the first aid instructor’s words from over thirty years ago running on a marquee through his head since he crawled across the floor _—do not remove the weapon until trained emergency personnel have arrived, apply sufficient pressure to the wound, remain still and calm while elevating the victim’s feet—_ , but there it is. Poultice. A soft mass of organic material prepared as a dressing and applied to a wound to alleviate soreness or inflammation. _Do not remove the weapon until, do not remove the weapon, do not remove, do not._

_Do_

_not._

It wouldn’t have done Rust any good, in the end. Marty idly wonders what that mix of blood and ancient dust would feel like pressed into the weeping wound in his chest. He doesn’t bother to try.

After the first flare went up he’d kept yelling for a little while, listening to the echo of his own voice growing thinner and more distant with every shout. He’d stopped, eventually, when it started hurting to draw in another rattling breath. Rust’s eyes looked like they were a thousand miles away under bruising lids and Marty decided that he needed to whisper instead.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he says, exhausted but almost furious, curling his fingers into Rust’s hair where it’d fallen loose from its tie. Shaking but still gentle, despite everything at all. “You knew better than to do that. I know you knew better than to—oh fuck, Rust.” Marty sobs, just once, and feels something hitch and pop in his right lung. “You knew better than that.”

Rust doesn’t answer. Marty hadn’t expected him to, but anger and fear and pain still beat against what little levee he’s got left, and it wasn’t going to take much to break it down now. Wasn’t going to take much at all.

At first he thinks he’s got blood dripping into his eyes, too damn tired to reach up and wipe it away, and then a single tear drops onto Rust’s cheek and slowly slides down the side of his face like he’d cried it himself.

Marty thinks, then, that he’s never seen Rust cry before. Thinks, maybe, that he’d like to if he could, if he ever got the chance. Anything at all but this—

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he hisses, weeping openly now but giving Rust a little jerk as if to rouse him out of sleep. The blood under his hand has slowed, black and inky and still under the faint starlight. “Don’t you do this to me, Rust.” He hasn’t checked the pulse in Rust’s neck but he knows there isn’t one there to find. “Not now.”

Marty crumples, bends over despite the blaring lopsided pain in his chest and sobs anyway. Holds Rust’s head in his lap and thinks about how he can’t breathe now, can’t breathe, doesn’t want to breathe anymore. There are voices coming from somewhere inside the maze, close but too far, and Marty can’t find his voice to call out to them.

They’d both always been so fucking stubborn. It’s almost funny, knowing how easy it is to let go in the end.

  
  


 

 

Rust is sitting on the crest of a hill when Marty finds him again.

“The fuck are you doing up here?” he asks, cheerfully enough, shoes shuffling through the green grass until he’s standing in the empty spot at Rust’s side. They’re looking down on some other people below; an older bearded man and a little girl in a yellow sun dress, playing together in the rose-colored twilight. A young man in a brown soldier’s uniform and a blonde lady in a white dress aren’t far away, sitting on a blanket beneath an oak tree. They wave when they see Marty, the lady’s white satin glove tinted pink under dusk. He doesn’t know them but he waves back, and the soldier grins with a gap-toothed smile and a sharp salute.

“Wondering when you were gonna get here,” Rust says, reaching out to push his fingers through the grass. His hair’s short again, caramel-colored and ruffling in the soft breeze. “Can sit down, if you want.”

Marty glances down at the spot next to him but doesn’t make any move to fold himself into it, only shifts his weight over onto one hip and slips his fingers in his jean pockets. “Nah,” he says, idly wondering why they’re both wearing their department-issue windbreakers. It’s cool here, but not cold enough to warrant a jacket. “Don’t think I’m gonna be staying very long.”

“Suit yourself,” Rust says, watching the sunset slowly deepen in front of them. It looks like it goes on forever until the end of the horizon, painted in an eternity that they could probably fall into if they wanted. Pink lemonade and tangerine-brushed gold, of all things.

“You know any of these people?” Marty asks, tipping his head toward the group of strangers below. “Dressed kinda funny.”

“Mmm, maybe,” Rust hums, eyes on the little girl laughing and screaming as the older man picks her up and swings her around in his arms. “Hadn’t gone down to introduce myself just yet.”

The sun is still sinking lower and Marty feels like the horizon is getting smaller as the sky grows darker, creeping toward them one slow inch at a time. He can’t see where it ends, but he feels like he needs to turn around and go back down the hill. Get Rust back on his feet so he can come, too.

“We should head back,” he says, worrying his bottom lip. “It’s startin’ to get dark out.”

“Where to?” Rust says, finally tipping his head back to look up at Marty, and he doesn’t look a day older than the morning he shook Marty’s hand seventeen years ago. “You know neither one of us have got anywhere pressing to be. Nothing back there worth seeing anyhow.”

Rust’s eyes turn back toward the little girl, waving now from the bottom of the hill. She calls out something, a vague word spoken in a toddler’s voice that might be _Daddy_ , but Marty doesn’t know for sure. He hasn’t had that name for a long time now.

“You don’t know that,” Marty snorts, though he’s not entirely sure of himself. He thumbs across his mouth before slipping one hand into the pocket of his windbreaker. “Plenty of shit we can get up to, I’m sure. I’ll take you out for a beer or something—go to that one barbecue place down in DeRidder, one with the coleslaw you like so much.”

“I’m not hungry, Marty,” Rust says, quiet, looking back out across the horizon. The sky is already halfway rolled up like a carpet, pink and yellow deepening into purples and indigo blues. Everything else beyond it is nothing, not even blackness, sucked into the endless maw of nonexistence. “You go on ahead before it gets too late. I’ll be alright.”

Marty laughs, feeling a phantom prick of something sharp in the crook of his left arm. His chest is hurting again, full of dull ache that blooms into a sharp spike of pain when he tries to draw in deeper breath. He’s getting tired of standing here, so he crouches down and puts a hand on Rust’s shoulder.

“It ever occur to you that I wasn’t gonna leave your ass behind again?” Marty asks. He doesn’t know why he says it, not really, but still knows it was the right thing to say.

“Again?” Rust echoes. He doesn’t shrug Marty’s hand off, only calmly glances down at the dark spot growing wider and wetter on the front of his windbreaker. “Don’t ever recall there being a first time.”

“We can talk about it later,” Marty says, getting a hand under Rust’s armpit and trying to hoist him up out of the grass despite the burning in his lungs. “Over that beer I owe you, when you got a little more sense rolling around in your head.”

Rust finally climbs to his feet and blood starts dripping out of the sleeve Marty’s got a hand around, dark and sticky on the grass. They both watch it for a moment, and then Rust looks down at the foot of the hill again. “They wanted me to stay.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Marty says, pulling him back a step or two. The sky is almost completely blotted out now, snuffed into the oblivion that he can’t see or fathom, and maybe this was the long bright dark—maybe it was the last midnight Rust had been talking about all those years ago. “But I want you to come with me, yeah? To come—come on back home, Rust.”

Rust looks at him then, clear blue on blue, and maybe that’s the only color left in the whole wide universe.

“You know I don’t have any place like that,” he says softly, only blinking when the other man slides his hand down to wrap it around Rust’s bloody palm.

“Not yet,” Marty says, and Rust squeezing his hand is the last thing he remembers before everything around them blinks away into nothing. “But we will.”

  
  
  


 

 

Marty does come back by the next day, just like he promised.

“Can’t you let me rot here in peace,” Rust grumbles, sitting up a little higher in bed than he was yesterday. The TV’s playing some afternoon talk show and he hasn’t touched the Jell-O cup the nurse left out for him, but Marty can’t help but grin so hard it nearly hurts.

“Think we both know the answer to that,” he says, wheeling further into the room until he’s next to Rust’s bed. They both gaze up at the television screen for a moment and then Marty glances over at the undisturbed Jell-O. “Ought to start eating a little bit now that you’re up.”

“I don’t want it,” Rust says, sagging back into his pillows. The dressing on his stomach is gone for the moment, and Marty’s eyes pick out the top two inches of a sutured scar peeking above the sheet around his waist. “Tastes like shit anyhow.”

“They should be letting me out tomorrow,” Marty says, and Rust’s eyes dart back over at that, glassy and sore-looking. “I’ll bring you back something good, whatever you want.”

Rust sighs, lashes slipping shut, his black eye smeared with some ointment or another that makes it look wet to the touch. Applause erupts on the television while a new music number starts in, but neither of them bothers to look at the screen.

“You don’t have to do that, Marty,” he says. “Don’t want you wasting your time with me.”

“Good thing I’m doing it anyway,” Marty says, sounding sternly resolute. “So you’d better pick wisely, else it’s gonna be the first damn thing that crosses my mind—and considering I’ve been living off broiled chicken breast and green beans for the past four days, I was thinking we should go for something that sticks to your ribs. Like—hell, I don’t know, maybe barbecue or something.”

Rust’s eyes snap open again, lips parting into a silent question. “What?” he croaks, almost scared to look over at the other man. “What?”

“Uh, it don’t have to be that,” Marty says, cowed a little bit. He idly rolls some in his wheelchair and shrugs his shoulders before smiling again. “That was just a suggestion, is all—we can do whatever you want, course.”

Rust can’t remember, he can’t remember when but he knows there had been green grass, a rosy sky, thin yellow cotton and Marty’s broad hand heavy and familiar on his shoulder. Not a place they’d ever been before that he can recall, but they’d been there. They had been there.

He doesn’t know why his eyes start to sting and well up, why his hands start shaking or why the heart monitor lets out a startled chirp. Marty looks at the screen, relieved when the spiked peak doesn’t last, and rolls up further along Rust’s bedside.

“Hey, hey now,” he says, reaching out to rest a hand on Rust’s bandaged forearm, light and careful. “Take a deep breath, alright? Before the nurse comes in here and whips me.” He tries for a laugh even though he winces when it comes out, sounding more like a rasping wheeze than a chuckle. “Guess you’re not in the mood for barbecue, then.”

There are tears on Rust’s face when he shakes his head, bringing up his other hand to try and scrub them away. The oxygen monitor on his index finger muddles things and he pulls it off, letting out a tiny little hiccup that he doesn’t have the energy left to be ashamed of. Least of all, he figures, here in front of Marty.

“I’m sorry, man,” Rust croaks again, shuddering when he draws in another breath. “Must be—these fucking drugs they’ve got me on, or some shit.”

Marty stays quiet, and Rust isn’t expecting the sensation of somebody taking his hand again, but it isn’t all that unwelcome when it comes. He lets Marty wrap his fingers around his hand, thumb brushing the IV port there, and doesn’t try to shake him off. The talk show host on television is laughing again but all Rust can hear is his own heart in his throat and Marty’s wheelchair creaking underneath him as he shifts even closer.

“We make a sore fucking sight, don’t we,” Marty says, and when he sniffs Rust finally finds enough nerve to look up at his face, peaceful enough except for the redness at the tip of his nose and rimming his eyes. “Downright embarrassing.”

Even so, they don’t let go of one another. Rust blinks until he can see clear again and swallows against the welt in the back of his throat. “What’s got you all upset?” he asks, sounding stranger and smaller than he’d expected, and Marty lets out a gentle laugh when he hears it.

“There you go with your personal questions again,” he says, shaking his head like there’s a marvel to be found in it. “Don’t know about you, but I’m sure as shit not upset about nothing.”

“Well what the fuck are you, then?” Rust asks, narrowing his eyes, and that pulls a frail but earnest smile out of Marty.

He looks at the drying tears on Rust’s beaten face and can only think of one word.

“Grateful,” he says, thinking a truer word has never been uttered between them. “Just grateful, is all.”

Rust doesn’t smile, but it’s a close enough thing. “All right,” he says, giving Marty’s hand the faintest little squeeze. “Come to think of it, seems like you might still owe me another beer.”

Marty nods and leans back into his wheelchair, wiping the heel of his free hand across his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, smiling around a small sigh that he blows out like a quiet prayer. “I think we can figure something out.”  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Scared you for a hot second there, didn't I? 
> 
> This crept up on me earlier and was written in the span of a few hours where I also stopped to cook dinner and evaluate my sad life, so I don't figure it's any magnum opus work. Love my boys, though. They won't ever die in the long run. <3


End file.
